The use of plasma in liquids has various applications. For example, one of the more common ways of performing quantitative analysis of solids and liquids is atomic or optical emission spectroscopy (OES), which measures the optical emissions from excited atoms to determine their concentration. In typical diagnostics, the components of the solution are aspirated into a hot plasma and vaporized, or atomized, by the plasma. While in the plasma, the components are electronically excited. Once removed from the plasma, the excited components decay back to a ground or relaxed state by emitting light having wavelengths associated with their particular atomic structure of the components. This produces narrow emission lines in a spectra that can be used to identify the components.